How do you organize your thoughts when you are writing a proposal? Or a paper? Or a research project?

I used to gather all my information in a normal word document, or a note in Evernote and have everything in a linear fashion using 1. a) b) c) , etc, but when it came time to write, I found it was too difficult to organize everything and write efficiently.

I’ve been experimenting with mind maps for a while now, and when writing a paper for one of my classes, I decided to use it to organize my thoughts.

Here is an image of the mind map I used to gather research and organize my thoughts when I wrote my paper entitled, “Planting Multiplying Spirit-Empowered Churches.”

What do you use to organize your thoughts and present them?

P.S. In case you’re wondering, the best program that I’ve discovered for mac is “Mind Node.” I have the free version on my mac, and the paid version on my ipad.